


a little longer

by hollimichele



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollimichele/pseuds/hollimichele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes there's a second chance. Post-ep for "The Doctor's Wife," with attendant spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little longer

The Doctor does, eventually, go to bed. In a bedroom, even; he asks the TARDIS to make him one and she obliges with a low happy hum, and he hangs up his goggles on the console before heading up the stairs. He follows the corridors, past Amy and Rory’s new room-- he hopes they like the hammocks-- past the kitchen, past the wardrobe and the library, takes a moment to regret the loss of the swimming pool, and-- ah! His room. His new room.

It’s a perfectly ordinary TARDIS bedroom, insofar as such a thing exists, with a wide soft bed and a hatrack and some intriguingly squiggly bottles scattered across the vanity. The lights are low, and the roundels on the walls gleam softly. There is another door on the far wall, where, presumably, there is a bathroom.

Bathrooms on the TARDIS are usually quite interesting. She never seems to have gotten the message that bathtubs are really only meant for one person.

The Doctor recalls fondly that the swimming pool had, in fact, started its life as a rather large bathtub, and in his distraction he does not notice that the bathroom door has opened. He does, however, certainly notice it when a woman steps out into the room. He notices it so much that his mouth gapes open and-- it must be said-- he drops his screwdriver.

Idris smiles at him. She is wearing a chemise of creamy linen, the tattered ballgown gone, and her hair is dark and loose about her shoulders. “Hello, Doctor,” she says.

The Doctor sputters inelegantly. “But you were-- and I just-- firewalls! And you died! And who’s flying the TARDIS, anyway, if we’re both in here?”

Idris scoffs. “Honestly! I can pilot two bodies at once. What do you take me for? _That_ wasn’t the tricky part.” But then her eyes drop to the floor, and she twists her hands, as though she is suddenly nervous.

The Doctor finds himself feeling unaccountably nervous as well, above and beyond the worry of who, exactly, he is talking to and who, exactly, is piloting just at the moment. But he’s beginning to understand what’s going on. “So you made the room, and then you-- made a body?”

She nods. "Just for a little while," she says. "An hour or two. I'm already forgetting how to be in a body, but I thought-- just a little while longer."

And, yes, he can taste the artron energy she’s leaking on the air, and see little flashes of gold about her hands and face. This body won’t last even as long as the last one, and there’s no telling if she’ll ever be able to make another. But he has another chance-- a wonderful, improbable, unlikely second chance-- and those, he has found in his long life, are vanishingly rare. He means to take full advantage of this one.

So he crosses the room in a few swift steps, and wraps his arms around her. “Oh!” she says. Her arms settle across his back, and she tucks her head into the curve of his shoulder. “I knew you were going to do this,” she murmurs against his shirt front, “but I didn’t think it would be so-- so--”

She smells like freshly-washed human, and like Time, and like something the Doctor cannot find a word for. He has had a day full of things he has no words for, and this is only another item for that list. And then the list gets a little longer, when she twists in his arms and leans in close and kisses him.

This is the first kiss the Doctor has had in this body that did not come as a total surprise, and he thinks it might also be the nicest. Idris smiles into his mouth and hums a low, happy, perfectly familiar hum, and the Doctor finds to his surprise that their hands have taken on rather a life of their own, and are roaming about each other’s bodies with a will. Her chemise is rucked up. His braces are off his shoulders, and his bow tie is undone.

They stop for a moment, and look at each other, already breathing heavily. “Right,” says the Doctor. “Are we going to--?”

“We are,” says Idris, with the assurance of one who is transcendantally unbound by Time. “And it’s going to be lovely.”

“Oh, good,” the Doctor breathes, and kisses her again, and lets her steer him towards the bed.

The next few minutes are occupied with an ecstasy of fumbling. The Doctor has never had sex in this body, and she has never had sex in any body at all, and it turns out, since she has never actually taken her own or anyone else’s clothes off before, that sleeves are rather difficult.

But they manage, somehow, and the moment in which he pulls her, naked, into his arms is truly glorious. She hitches one bare pale thigh around his hip. He tries to keep his composure, and fails utterly.

It is lovely. Everything is lovely: Idris' low giggle, the feeling of her hands tracing circles over his hipbones, and, most of all, the way that Time seems to have stopped being quite so linear, here on this soft wide bed. The Doctor finds himself experiencing things all at once, or possibly out of order, or possibly he's just a little overheated from all the artron energy and bare skin.

Whatever it is, this is what is feels like: he is kissing Idris' stomach, and she is laughing, and she is leaning over him with her hair hanging down, and she is hitching her hips in a way that makes his breath catch. All of this seems to be happening at once. The Doctor wonders if this is what every moment is like, for his TARDIS; he hopes so. It's lovely.

But it ends, as all things do in Time, and the two of them lie tangled and damp on the soft bed, their breathing slowing. "I wish--" the Doctor says, and does not finish the thought. She knows what he wishes. She does not say so, though, but only presses a kiss to his temple. And then she is gone, in a wash of golden light, and he is alone again.

Or perhaps he isn't. The engines hum, low and happy, and he reminds himself that she is with him always.

He falls asleep, in the room she made for him, and he is smiling.


End file.
